My husband Ed and I took our family up to Birkenhead Lake campground on the weekend of Aug 25-28.
We were expecting a nice relaxing weekend out in the “wilderness” but that is not what happened.
On the second night there my 13-year-old daughter Nicole asked her dad to walk to the outhouse with her, around 12:30 a.m.
On their way back, they noticed flames in between two campsites. They both stopped and stared before realizing what they were seeing. Ed walked into the bushes and yelled for Nicole to go and get mom (me).
Poor terrified Nicole goes running down the road in her pink house coat and purple sparkly slippers screaming “forest fire – forest fire!”
I grab my shoes, run down to Ed and am in shock to see glowing red embers in between two campsites and four people from the campsite beside it were desperately trying to help Ed fill up pots and run back to the flames. I ran back to our campsite and woke up our camp-mate Marty to help put out the fire.
We grab more pots and bowls and ran back to the fire. Ed had broke the branches that were flaming and stomped them out, but they were now left with a giant cedar log glowing red. So they had to grab some axes and chop it up.
Nicole and I then jumped in our car in search of the Park Ranger. I didn’t notice the trailer next to the building that I was knocking on and was wondering why they weren’t answering. So I went back in the car and started honking the horn.
Poor guy stumbles out of his trailer and when I tell him there’s a forest fire in the campground he jumps into action.
I head back to the campsite, and find that they have the fire out. No more flames, but still tons of hot spots and glowing red embers. The Park Rangers took over and worked on it, chopping and digging and soaking the tree for another two hours.
The Forest Service people came the next day, and told us that if we had left it for another 15 minutes, the entire campground would have been evacuated and the fire would have been beyond the point of being able to put it out without proper fire apparatus.
Being in D’Arcy, there is no cellphone service, so we would have been hooped!
So thank God for small bladders! Nicole saved our weekend, and the campsite!
Another exciting family adventure.
Judy LaPointe
BURNABY
